Abakuá, an Afro-Cuban secret society

Roundtrips to Cuba are organized by the state and seem to be the same from whatever country you buy the trip. There are not that many books you can buy: all diaries of Che Guevara, thoughts of Fidel and Raoul Castro, a book on Havana mafia before the revolution, one or two books of CIA plots against Cuba and finally some books of Afro-Cuban religions.

Cuba used to be a Catholic country, but during the atheistic Communistic regime the Church has lost believers. There are only few Catholic priests in the country and not so many working churches. It is the only country where I have seen a Catholic church having an Adidas shop in the street level. The most popular religion in Cuba is Santeria. It is a Yoruba religion disguised as some kind of Christianity, syncretism. We saw a worship place of Yemayá, the black Saint Mary, who in reality is the Yoruba river goddess, a mermaid.

Abakuá is a much smaller religion. It has some 20,000 members, known as ñañigos. They are men that you better not mess with, associated with a macho culture, violence and criminality, but also with drums and dance and Abakuá has had a certain influence on Cuban music, notably rhumba. I bought a book of Abakuá written by Ramón Andrés Torres Zayas. Unfortunately the translation to English was so bad that it was often difficult to understand what the author meant, so a book of the CIA I preferred to buy in Spanish though I have forgotten all my Spanish a long time ago. It was still possible to read the book, though for a while I thought to throw it, and from the Internet one could find some additional information on Abakuá, after the trip: you can use Internet from the hotels in Cuba for an hourly payment, but it made more sense to smoke cigars, go to a free gym and swim in the sea, but now I have read the book and can write a short story of what thoughts I got from Abakuá.

Information of secret societies is always fragmentary as such organizations try to keep their secrets hidden. I was maybe in a bit better position after spending years trying to track what the secret societies were doing between the middle of the 18^th and the beginning of the 20^th Century when Freemasonry still was a subversive movement. Abakuá indeed has a connection to Freemasonry and they were opposing slavery and the Spanish colonial power.

Some ñañigos were fighting the Spanish on the side of José Martí in the Cuban war of independence 1895-98. These ñañigos seem to have been white (that is, Creoles): Roman Quirino Valdés and Felipe Espinola Travieso.  There were two earlier wars against Spain in 1868-78 and 1879-80 and Abakuá seems to have joined the independence movement only at the final stage.

White men were accepted to Abakuá in 1863 after mestizo Andrés Petit had argued that accepting whites it would improve the position of blacks and help the Abakuá society to survive: as Abakuá brothers whites would help their black brothers. Petit was an interesting figure, who was not only a leader in Abakuá, but also founded a Catholic Order Kimbisa, the belonged to Rule of Palo Monte, Santerio and Freemasons. Several Masons joined Abakuá (Masonry accepted blacks at that time) and it seems that the organization of Abakuá as a secret society is from Masons, as is participation to the independence movement.

Originally Abakuá did not accept mestizos or whites, only black men. The society did not select its members in youth and persuade them to join, as seems to be the case with Santeria and Palo Monte, but aspirants had to ask for admittance to the society. Abakuá is a religious society for mutual help. They arrange what they call games (religious meetings with drumming and dances) and on the Three Kings Day masked Abakuá dansers, íremes, perform in the street and later in carnivals. These dances have a meaning, messages from ancestral spirits, but in order to understand the message one should know what each of the four drums is telling and what the movements of íreme mean. It is a kind of a language. Abakuá has a secret language, which originally derives from Nigeria, but is only partially preserved and very poorly known outside the society. The language is used in ritual phrases and lacks words and grammar to be used in normal communication, which ñañigos do in Cuban Spanish. Abakuá also has a picture language: symbols and seals are drawn and they have some aspects of hieroglyphs, but they are not developed enough for writing arbitrary sentences. Their usage is magical. Additionally there are the rites: worshipping a sacred tree ceiba, goat and rooster sacrifices, the myth of Sikón, tattoos, family traditions, magic and so on.

It is a men’s secret society belonging to a common tradition where men protect their magic from women by keeping it secret and women have their own secret society and women magic. This is a part of the division of work between the genders. Abakuá in Cuba lacks the women secret societies because the slaves that were taken to Cuba to work on plantations were mostly men. The traditions of Abakuá are from the Cross River area of Niger, where also women have their societies and magic. The mail purpose of such men’s and women’s societies it to initiate boys and girls to their adult roles. Initiation always involves special rites and secrets. Originally these secrets have been the secrets of the tasks of each gender: in Nigeria women did the fishing, preparing food and raising children, while men were hunters, herders, warriors and slave traders. Typically in many cultures women magic includes medicines, especially for women problems and fertility, poisons, curses, spells for getting married, beauty secrets, and other such “women stuff”, while men magic include priestly practices and ceremonial magic, animal and human sacrifices, working miracles, hunting magic, preparing tools, weapons, masks and playing instruments and giving them magic powers, creation myths, tribe legends and such more “important” things. There is always a bias seeing men’s work as more important, so I am skeptical if there ever was a time when women were suppressing men. I think there was no such time and all myths explaining how men got the power because some woman committed a sin are just expressions that these machos try to justify why they are treating their women so badly.

As in many such men secret societies, the foundation myth tells of the time when women had the power and why they lost the power and become subordinate to men. These myths may be connected with patriarchic religions, which replaced fertility cults, but the Abakuá myth is not old: the myth mentions gunpower and dates to 17^th century earliest. At that time Western African kingdoms were selling slaves to Europeans. Abakuá originates from the religion of these black slave traders and it does not condemn slave traders at all. Indeed, two of the most appreciated figures in the myth of Sikán, Mosongo and Mokongo, were slave dealers. There are travel stories from West Africa from the time of the slave trade. These African slave traders had the custom of honoring the spirits of the dead by chop heads of from tens of their slaves, the origins of Abakuá are not peaceful and anti-slavery, and they definitely are macho and for suppressing women. The macho culture implies many sexual relations, though the official wives of ñañigos cannot be touched. Adding the association with criminality and marginality in the society, this secret men-only club sounds very much like a typical mafia.

The foundation myth of Sikán tells how Efos and Efis, two tribes in Cross Country, Nigeria at the time of the slave trade, had constant disputes over land. Sikán, the princess of Efos, went to fill her pumpkin with water and found a fish, Tanze, from the pumpkin. This fish, which was a monster, had the terrifying Voice. It was sent by the high god Abasi. The Voice provided prosperity, but Sikán told of it to her lover, a Efi prince, who wanted the Secret (that is, the Voice). The fish died. The high witch tried to bring the fish back to life, but could not, so he decided that Sikán must be sacrificed, maybe her blood will resurrect the fish. It did not, but the two tribes made a deal as both participated in the Secret and that ended the disputes.

Of course, the myth is more complicated than that, but you find different versions of it from the Internet. Whatever it means beats me, but you cannot tell secrets to a woman. In this case the woman got the secret first, but was still killed for telling it further even though the result was good. The end does not sanctify the means.

I read the words of the best Buena Vista Social Club song, Chan Chan. We listened to Buena Vista Social Club in Cuba, they played in a restaurant, but unfortunately the music was very loud and lacked the poetry of the original band – these are not the same musicians as in the beginning, only the grand old lady is still there. Some 15 years ago they played in Helsinki and at that time they still were good, but now it was too loud music for my taste. Maybe it is that I do not understand Cuban music, but I remember only three great Cuban songs: Quantanamera, Hasta Siempre Comendante in the version of Nathalie Cardone and Chan Chan in the original version.

Now, the words of Chan Chan are a bit cryptic. There are a man and a woman, Chan Chan and Juanica. They go from town to town looking for sand to build a house. Chan Chan confirms his love. They come to the sea. Juanica sifts sand. It makes Chan Chan sad. And then is a strange part: Chan Chan says clear the path, I only want to go to sit on the tree trunk. What does the clearing the path and sitting on the tree trunk mean, assuming that Juanica shakes her bottom and Chan Chan gets arosed, as seems to be the suggested explanation?

This song I supposed to be based on a children tale, or country-side lore from Cuba, about Juanica and Chan Chan. As the song is so popular, I would expect that somebody wrote something of such a lore, but no. There is no information of Juanica and Chan Chan. Instead there is the Abakuá myth of Sikán. So, Juanica= Sikán. In the myth there is Eribangando, who is íreme, sprint of an ancestor. So, Chan Chan=Eribangando. And there is the sieve for shifting sand, jiba. In the myth there is ceiba, the sacred tree that is always worshipped in the beginning of the rite for this myth. The tree is another expression of the high god Abasi, like the Tanza fish.

In the first verse Juanica and Chan Chan go from town to town, apparently looking for something, sand for building the house. In the myth everybody is looking for the Voice, the basis of the religion.

In the second verse Chan Chan tells of his love. In the myth Sikán has a lover. It is not told that it is Eribangando, but Eribangando is there when Sikán goes to the shore. Eribangando saves Sikán’s life by killing a crocodile and a snake, which attack the princess, so something there is between the two.

In the third verse Juanica shifts sand with jibe in the sea shore, also shakes herself and Chan Chan gets sad. In the myth Sikán goes to the shore, finds Tanze, expression of Abasi. Ceiba is also an expression of Abasi and central in the rite. Sikán tells of Tanze to her lover and is sacrificed for it. Eribangando gets sad because Sikán is killed.

In the fourth verse Chan Chan asks to clear the path and that he wants to sit on the trunk of the tree. In the myth and the rite Eribangando clears the path to the sacred tree Ukano Bekonsi.

I do not know, but it is told that Abakuá has even recorded music of the society being sure that outsiders do not understand it.

So, this much I learned of Abakuá from this book. There is some similarity with Abakuá and Freemasonry. A men’s closed society creates men solidarity and easily becomes a mutual help group. It is quite essential to exclude women in order to have the close brotherhood of a warrior or a hunter party. (Just to point out, Abakuá is very much against homosexuality, it is not that kind of brotherhood that men societies create.) Men societies give role models to boys. Boys are initiated into these men societies as a step of a boy becoming a man.

In the English speaking world there are university fraternities in old private universities, these Greek letter societies, including Skulls and Bones. It is said that the CIA often recruits from some of these fraternities. In the UK it is known, MI5 recruits from some old private universities. The CIA is not at all old. Before it existed there were the Freemason lodges arranging revolutions and coups in other countries, something the CIA has been doing. The British Secret Service is older, but it has always had connections to occult and esoteric secret societies. It is like a secret society is a model of secret services and both are actually based on the very old men’s society concept. There is the origin of secrets and power. For instance, Abakuá had power. It was controlling the ports of Cuba and the cigar factories. The origin of Abakuá, Nigerian èkbé, was a governing system: the slave kingdom was expanding on new areas and had to govern potentially hostile people.

There is a common feature in such secret societies: they claim to have possessed a Secret, but the Secret is lost and replaced by a man made Secret. Thus, in the Abakuá myth, Tanze died but the Voice was replaced by a sacred drum. In Freemasonry the Sercet was lost when three robbers murdered Hiram. In Kabbalism Yeshu (Jesus) stole the Secret (the real secret name of God that you need for making real magic) from the temple and hid it in his flesh. The purpose of all this seems to be to inform naive members of the society that, while the Divinity really gave the miracle making power to the society and it rightfully belongs to them, they presently cannot do real miracles, all miracles are man made.

This type of a secret society is a way of governing. Today it is closely associated with the Axis of the Good (this time left unspecified). It is easy to understand how such societies lend to information gathering activities and also to influencing the society. It may be more difficult to grasp why they must be men only and why there is the occult, magic aspect that seems to serve no real purpose. Certainly there is a purpose for everything. These are very old organization models and they must be nearly perfect for their job. We outsiders just have to think more carefully. I can easily come up with many explanations, but will report it only if I think I finally found the correct one. The power of secret societies is largely based on the impossibility of saying where the power is. At some point the leaders were unknown, now the official leaders are known, but it does not help much. So, we know who is the head of the CIA, and how does it help knowing of secret operations? These secret organizations influence through media, very much like false flag attacks and provide mutual aid, which may occasionally look like nepotism.

There is another form of conspiracy, the open conspiracy, like Communism. It has known leaders, who are made into idols. It looks for support from masses, organizes mass meetings and all this. We know all this, but it is still very confusing. Why European secret societies at some point decided to switch to open conspiracy? There are so many historical questions that I am really disappointed that I have to think about such things. Why the real historians have not investigated anything relevant?